Adrenaline, fear and my will to survive melted into one another, becoming something stronger, becoming a part of me—of my fight. I still had living to do and I had people to love, people who loved me and words that ached to be set free. If I didn’t make it out of here, I would never see Trace again. He would never know what happened to me. He would never know that despite it all, despite the chasm in my heart, I still loved him so.
My blurred vision shifted to Dominic; Dominic who was still fighting desperately for our survival. If I didn’t find a way to break out of this, he was going to go to his death trying to save me. I’d never get to thank him for everything he’d done for me. I’d never get a chance to steal that kiss.
The tragedy of it all jolted me backwards. I was tumbling through my own mind, tumbling far past the life I’d always longed for and all the way down the rabbit hole to the life I was meant to live.
And then it happened.
Something inside of me snapped into place.
A force as fierce and native as the wind came crashing in on me, into me, soaring through my body as though it were a living breathing thing; awakening every cell in my being to its true calling, and then leaving my body just as quickly as it came.
Leaving my body, but not me.
Like magic, my power vibrated all around me, fluttering in and out of me like a hurricane I was meant to take control of. I could feel it twisting and bending itself to my will, molding itself against me as it waited for me to take the reins.
My feet lifted from the hole as a clap of red lightening crackled through the sky above us. Everything inside of me was warring with the outside world around me, and for once, I was winning.
Fearlessly, I hovered in the air, high above the flames and suspended by my own device. The electricity running through my blood was hotter than ever, making my skin glow as it buzzed all through my body. I could feel the power inside of me, aching for release—for freedom.
The sisters looked up and they knew. I knew. Even before I looked down at the silver runes blazing through my arms, I knew.
I’d just invoked.
16. BLOODY SKIES
“Annabelle!” shouted Arianna as she and Anita began backing away from the pit.
My feet hit the ground just as Annabelle bolted around the crater’s edge to her waiting sisters. Getting out of that hole had been as easy as making the decision to get out. The invisible forcefield around me was dead, and whatever power the sisters previously had over me died right along with it.
I glanced over at the three of them, and smiled. The tight lines in their faces told me they were scared to get close to me; petrified of going up against me. As strange as that seemed to me, I didn’t waste time mulling it over.
I had more important things to contend with.
Spinning around, I faced the death-pit. An unpleasant scratching sensation needled its way out of my belly and into the rest of my body. It was like whispers under my skin; whispers I couldn’t hear, but I could feel them inside of me—tugging me forward, urging me to destroy the pit; to bury it under earth and rubble.
My palms itched as the whispers reached my fingertips, and like a servant, I had to obey. Curling my hand into a ball, I crashed my fist against the bordering wall, rocking it to its very core with a show of power I didn’t fully understand yet. Jagged fissures zipped around the wall, weakening the structure before it collapsed inwardly and crumbled to the ground in a pile of earth and rock.
I had no idea why I did it, or how I did it, but it felt right.
For the first time in a long time, I felt together inside. I felt as though I were exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do. The why’s and how’s of it didn’t matter to me in that moment. Only that I was doing it.
Only that I was alive again.
I turned back to face the sisters, but they were already running away from me and the resulting wreckage, running as far away as their feet would take them, and I let them go. I had far greater promises to fulfill. Far more dangerous demons to take down. My gaze shuffled through the crowd of chaos until they settled on my target—on the only target that ever mattered to me.
Old-ass omnipotent Engel, running scared like a fraidy-cat.
I took off after him, my feet barely touching the ground as I leaped from the clearing and ran. The rough terrain slammed back against my feet mercilessly as I weaved my way through the chaos. Dodging Revenant after Revenant, I pushed them out of my way as though they were feather light and inconsequential. Nothing else existed to me but my target. Nothing else mattered except catching up to him.
In what felt like seconds, I was right behind Engel, chasing him down savagely as my feet pounded against the earth at unnatural speeds. The air whipped by my ears louder than a howling pack of wolves, and I imagined all the things I would do to him. All the revenge I would take on him for what he’d done to me—to my friends.
It was the push I needed to end this.
I dove forward and tackled him to the ground. Our bodies rolled over each other violently before crashing into an oak tree. Within seconds, he was back on his feet, and I was right there with him, Armageddon raining down all around us.
A cautious smile swept across his face as he stared back at me. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“What is?” I asked as everything around me faded into the background.
“How far we’ve come, you and I.” He looked me over unhurriedly as though we had all the time in the world to talk it over. “I must say. In this light, you look just like your mother.”
My jaw clenched. “You don’t know anything about my mother.”
“I know a great deal about your mother. After all, it was I who sired her.”
I faltered, my spine curling from the impact of his words. But only for a second, and then I realized what he was trying to do. He was trying to distract me—to throw me off my game again. Only this time, I wasn’t going to let him.
“You’re a filthy liar. A dead one at that.”
His lips pushed up into a small smile. “Perhaps my time has indeed come to pass. But you cannot undo what has been done, child. You’re too late. The door has been opened.”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t answer because I wasn’t listening anymore. The only words that mattered to me in that moment was the scratching whispers under my skin.
Kill him.
Kill him now.
I kicked off the ground and pounced on him, taking him down to the ground with one easy swoop. His teeth clicked beside my ear, making promises of peace and certain-death, but that was as close to me as I would allow him to get. Flipping him over, I straddled his body and he rewarded me with a fist to my jaw. But it had little impact on me.
There was nothing he could do to hurt me now.
Nothing he could do to stop me from what I was born to do.
I hit him hard with an open hand and then a closed fist. His head shook from the impact and a part of me lit up at the sight of it. I hit him again, and then again, pounding down on him until blood was pouring out from every orifice on his face. I wanted to dismember his existence, to take him apart piece by piece. The vengeance in my heart begged me to make his death slow and torturous, to drag him into the dungeon he’d held me in and make him suffer a fate a thousand times more insufferable than death.
But I had to ignore it. I couldn’t allow myself to be overcome by dangerous emotion and risk letting him get away again. There was no confusion. No self-doubt. No hesitation. I rammed my hand through his chest, plunging through skin and muscle and bone, until I reached the chamber of his beating heart and then I yanked it out. Thick streaks of blood dripped down my arm as I watched him desiccate right before my eyes.
And with that, it was finally over.
Engel was dead.
In the distance, I heard his men calling out to each other, urging one another to abandon their fallen king and his castle. Their feet pounded against the soil from all direction
s as they bolted from the clearing in search of safer grounds. Those who were too loyal (or too stupid) to leave were being ripped to shreds by Dominic’s exquisite wolf form.
As much beauty as there was in that moment in time, I didn’t bother turning back to watch the slaughter or bask in the victory of their defeat.
My gaze was fixed on the heavens above me.
And it stayed that way until Dominic killed off the last of the Revs and finally found his way back to my side. Shifting back into his human form, he knelt beside me in all his glory.
“You did it, angel,” he said, his dark eyes painting tracks over my face as he spoke. “You finally slayed your dragon.”
I tipped my head at his words, still holding Engel’s heart in my hand. As gruesome as it sounded, it wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the other real-life nightmare that had unfurled itself before my eyes.
“We can go home now.” He reached over and pried the dead heart from my hand. “It’s all over.”
“No.” I shook my head, my eyes never leaving the crimson sky from all my nightmares. I pointed up to it as terror shivered its way down the length of my spine. “I think it’s only just begun.”
17. ALL ROADS LEAD HOME
The drive back to Hollow Hills was mostly silent. I was too stunned to do anything more than stare out the window at the crimson sky and the miles of blurry trees that swept by us like oil streaks.
Dominic had done his best to pry out the details about what had happened out there—about the blatant runes all over my hands and arms—but I couldn’t produce any answers for him. I was going to need truck loads of alone-time to sort through the mess in my head before I would be ready to talk about it with anyone. The truth was, I had no idea what happened out there tonight. With Engel. With the Dark Casters…the ritual.
And worse, with myself.
There were millions of unknowns whipping around in my mind, but I couldn’t find the courage to own them just yet, to ask the questions that needed answering. The cold truth was, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I wasn’t sure how I’d invoked or what that would mean for me now. For my bloodlines. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was coming back home a different person, and I was terrified to my core of who that person might be.
So, I did the only thing that felt normal to me. I buried it. I pushed my fears and uncertainty as far down as I could get them, and I turned my attention to something else—something bigger than myself, something more tangible. I turned my attention to the nightmare that had just bled right into my reality.
I’d hoped that after destroying the pit and burning Engel’s body that the sky would’ve returned to normal, but it didn’t seem to work out that way.
The Roderick sisters had done something; changed something. Engel had said as much before I killed him—that I was too late; that the door had already been opened.
Only problem was, I had no idea what he was talking about.
When Trace’s Alt came back to warn me about The Uprising, he never mentioned anything about doors opening. Maybe his coming back had altered the course of events? Maybe what happened out there tonight wasn’t just about the Uprising. Maybe it was something worse.
I looked over at Dominic.
His posture appeared relaxed, with one arm on the armrest and the other one loosely holding the steering wheel, but if I looked close enough, I could see the faint impression of stress lines between his eyebrows. He was worried and that scared me even more than the red glow around the moon.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked him, ticking my chin to the strange sky as the fog-kissed road rushed past us on both sides.
He turned abruptly as though I’d surprised him with speaking again. “No, angel. I have not.”
I felt a chill run down my back, but I suppressed it. “What do you think it means?”
He shook his head without looking at me. “I can’t say for sure,” he said, tilting his head to the side as if to study the view. “Whatever they were trying to accomplish, it appears as though it worked.”
I frowned and then shook my head. “They didn’t finish.” That much was obvious when they broke formation and took off running. But, they’d done something. “There has to be something in the books about this.”
“I wouldn’t know, love.” He smirked. “My brother the scholar might be better equipped to confirm or deny that.”
I nodded. If any of this was in the records, Gabriel would have read about it and memorized the text backwards. Of Course, Gabriel was more of a package deal. And did I really want the Council and Tessa getting involved in this before I even figured out what this thing was?
Grimacing, I said “We need to find the sisters and find out exactly what that ritual did.”
“And what makes you think they would help you?”
“Because I’m not planning on giving them an option.” My frown deepened. “They better have a way to undo this mess before it gets any worse.” Though frankly, I wasn’t even sure of the consequences yet.
“You can’t undo magic, love,” he pointed out, but I already knew that.
“You know what I mean.” I wasn’t about to let formalities get in the way of what needed to be done. “We need to find them and we need to force them to fix whatever the hell they did.”
He didn’t openly object, though something in his eyes was telling me that finding them wasn’t going to be that easy. That this mess wasn’t just going to be swept away under some hellish rug.
“How hard can it be?” I asked rhetorically. “They work for the highest bidder. We just need to figure out what their price is and lure them out with it.”
“I wish it were that easy, angel.” He bounced a glance at me and then shifted gears. “They aren’t your run-of-mill Dark Casters. They hail from one of the most powerful covens of our time.”
“So what? Big deal!” I said, unimpressed with their stats.
“Getting involved with them is dangerous.”
“I think it’s a little late for that,” I countered. “Besides, it’s not like they’re the first Descendants to turn away from the Order and join the Dark Legion…or whoever the hell they’re working for. I’m not scared of them.”
“Well, you should be. For starters, they didn’t turn away from the Order. They were turned away…from birth.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they’re half demon, love,” he said, bouncing a glance at me as he ticked his eyebrows ominously. “While that makes for quite a tasty bloodline, it’s also the quickest way to get shut out by the Order.”
Why was I not surprised? “So they’re half angel and half demon?”
“The very best and worst of both worlds.”
“Great.” I threw my hands up in frustration. God only knows what the hell their twisted demon-magic did or what kind of havoc it was going to wreak on the rest of us. And with demon blood running through their veins aplenty, I seriously doubted I was going to be able to appeal to their sensible, let’s-save-the-world-together side. But God damn me, I had to try. “I’m not giving up, Dominic. We have to try.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do, love, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said without looking at me. All cautions aside, he appeared to be up for the challenge. “We’ll give it the old college try first thing in the morning.”
“No.” I shook my head decidedly. “We need to start now. Tonight.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“They couldn’t have gotten very far. If we put the word out and make some calls, I’m sure we could track them—maybe even catch up to them.”
Dominic looked at me as though I’d left my mind behind at the castle. “You need to go home and rest, angel.”
Home. Ugh. There was that damn word again. The word that seemed to be completely incongruent with my life.
“I can’t go home,” I said, shaking my head. “Not when all hell is breaking loose around us! We need to start working on this
tonight, Dominic. It’s too important.”
“You’ve been missing for weeks, angel. Your family and friends are probably worried sick about you. You’ve been drained and starved and beaten. You need to go home and recuperate or you won’t be of any use to anyone.”
“I don’t need to recuperate. I’m perfectly fine,” I insisted.
His eyes fell heavy on me, weighing me down like gravity.
“What is this really about?” he asked gently, catching me off guard.
“What? Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I redirected my focus out the window. I didn’t want to talk about my actual feelings. I didn’t want to talk about any of it. I just wanted to hunt down the sisters and hide from my other problems for just a little while longer. Was that too much to ask for?
“Angel?”
“I’m not going back there,” I finally said, irritated that he could see through my walls so easily.
“To your uncle’s?”
“Yes, to my uncle’s. Not until I find out who was responsible for what happened to me at the party. If the Council was behind the attack, it means they know the truth about my blood and they’ll come after me again.” I left out the part about how I wasn’t sure I could trust my uncle anymore either, and that I had suspicions over his involvement in the attack against me. It was too ugly to even think about let alone to say out loud. So I didn’t.
“Then where am I taking you, angel?”
“I…I don’t know,” I sputtered as my mind went blank at his question. I hadn’t actually thought that far.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly. “Why don’t you just say it? You know you want to.”
His arrogant tone struck a sour chord with me.
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